Thomas C. Foster was a professor of English at the University of Michigan in Flint, where he taught for decades. His classes covered contemporary fiction, drama, poetry, and creative writing, and he wrote scholarly work on modern Irish and British writers before turning to books for general readers. How to Read Literature Like a Professor first came out in 2003 and quickly became a staple of high school and college English classes, with a revised edition following in 2014. Its success led him to write follow ups, including How to Read Novels Like a Professor and Reading the Silver Screen, which applies the same approach to movies. Across all of them, his goal stayed the same. He wanted to hand ordinary readers the tools professors use so they could get more out of every book they pick up.
